More A55 motherboards show up, offer great value

More vendors are joining the cheap and cheerful A55 motherboard market, with a few pretty affordable boards for AMD Llano FM1 processors.

In case you’ve missed it, the A55 is a no-thrills version of the A75 chipset. It lacks native SATA 6Gbps and USB 3.0 support, but A55 boards tend to offer impressive value for money. Besides, most entry level consumers simply don’t need these advanced features.

So, following in the footsteps of Gigabyte and ECS, Asus and Asrock are rolling out their first A55 boards. Both outfits have three boards on offer. Asrock is coming out with two ATX boards and it boasts DDR3 2400+ support. In addition, the A55 Pro3 delivers USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps support, which sort of makes us wonder why they bothered, since A75 already supports these features.

The A55 iCafe and A55H-HSV are ATX and mATX boards respectively. They lack USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps, hence they will probably end up on the cheap side. Sadly, there is no word on price yet and the boards aren’t listed in Europe as of Wednesday.

However, three Asus boards are already appearing in price lists and they are quite affordable. The full-AT F1A55 is priced at €66 and the mATX version, F1A55-M, goes for €65. The cheapest F1A55-M LE goes for just €58. It’s worth noting that we do not have the exact spec for either of them at the moment.

In terms of value, Gigabyte still leads the way, with its GA-A55M-S2V, which sells for just €51 and it is already available in several European markets.

Judging by early pricing info, it seems we will see sub-€50 A55 motherboards just in time for new Llano APUs. Depending on who you talk to, new 65W A-series parts and Athlons should start shipping by the end of the month or in the first week of September.